The Hidden City (97 page)

“Like this?” Duster asked bitterly.

“Like this,” was the serene reply. “But what I need from you now, what I need to know now—the rest can wait—is that you can walk away from this when you need to. No,” she added, holding up her hand, stemming the words, “that's not fair. I need to know that you can walk away from this when
I
need you to.

“We won't always live where we live,” she added, and her eyes changed, shifting almost imperceptibly into something darker and rounder, something like black but warmer. “We won't always be safe.”

“You call this safe?”

Jewel winced. She should have looked away. But she didn't. “Yes,” she whispered. Hard to say the word. Duster knew the tone. But she said it. “This is safe compared to where we will be, later.

“And when we're there, you'll know. Finch is never going to raise a sword in my name or in my defense, and if she did, she'd only cut off one of her legs. Teller will never be able to do it either. You can,” she added. “You're like a walking sword. But you've got no sheath, Duster, and you need one.”

The urge to say something lewd came and went. “You want me to be your muscle?”

“Something like that.”

And that, Duster understood. As much as she could understand anything about Jewel, she could understand that.

The rest could wait, would have to wait.

Because whatever it was Jewel could see in Duster, whatever it was she
wanted
, was not what the demons had seen. It was different.

It was something that Duster wanted, for a moment, to believe of herself. And there was only one way she could do that, and that one way, that narrow path, was standing there like Judgment, waiting on an invisible throne.

She swallowed.

She said, without thought, without the desire to hide, “He
hurt
me. They always do.”

And Jewel flinched, and nodded. And said, “I know.” And her voice broke on both syllables, and her eyes narrowed, and Duster could almost taste the desire that was so much like her own—Ah.

So much in those two words. Too much. But they were
true
, and if they were true, and Jewel could stand there and
be
Jewel . . . then the rest just might be true as well.

What rest? What else? She could mock herself in the silence of thought. Deride herself. Call herself weak where she'd kill anyone else who even started the syllable.

But she could find just enough to believe, and she wanted that belief so badly it terrified her.

Jewel said, “It's always harder when you have something to lose.”

“What do I have to lose?”

“Us.”

“I don't give a shit about any of you.”

“Then choose, Duster, and we're gone.”

And Duster did choose. Eyes closed, hand trembling, the future opening before her like a pit from which there might be no escape. She slit his throat cleanly and quickly, and if her hands were drenched in the sudden gout of his blood, she barely noticed. Because when she opened her eyes, when she could see the world again, it was wavering.

And Jewel was pale as a ghost, and her eyes—she was crying. Not sobbing, not that—but there were tears now across her cheeks which had not been there five minutes before.

“For him?” Duster said, feeling anger's bite. Something like jealousy.

“For you,” Jewel told her softly. “Because it's hard, what you did, and I didn't know if you
would
. I knew that you could, but it's not the same thing.” She held out her hand, her bruised arm, and Duster stared at it.

Stared at it until Jewel took another step forward, hand still outstretched.

So many choices, to be here. To be in this place. Duster had not lied to Jewel. She didn't care about “us.” Whatever that was. But she had nothing against lying anyway.

Was it a lie, then, to reach out for Jewel's single hand with both of her own? Was it a lie to pull back just before they touched, because her hands were so red and slick with a dead man's blood she was—for just a moment—afraid that all that would remain when she pulled her hands back would
be
that blood, that death?

But Jewel didn't allow her to find out. The blood, she ignored as she could; the single hand became two as she caught Duster and pulled her to her feet. It was awkward, with Lord Waverly between them; Duster stepped on him by accident, as if he were a cumbersome and broken bridge.

“Rath,” Jewel said, without looking away, “we need to leave quickly. We need to go home.”

 

Carver took command then, but quietly, his words so short and pointed he could sign them. Lander had been standing outside of the door, as if death and only death waited there, but when they came out, following in Carver's wake, Rath had not moved an inch. “Take the tunnels,” he told her quietly. “Go back the way we came. Don't stop, Jewel. Tonight is not the night for a tour.” And then he stopped, and covered his hands with his eyes as if he were greatly weary and ached with it. “No,” he said, his voice soft. “You have the magestones. Use them, and take the time you need.

“You've seen enough tonight. See as much as you want, as much as you think you can manage. And then
go straight home,
and stay there. Don't answer the door. There shouldn't be anyone at it.”

By which, Jewel understood that he meant to join them through the streets of the undercity, but later. She didn't ask what he was going to do. She didn't want to know. She was herself in pain, and walking was hard, at first. Breathing was painful.

But the other sharp sensation was both painful and joyful, and it was the latter that she clung to, as hard as she could. Duster's hand. Duster's choice. This was the better way: to find joy, to find the single beam of light in the darkness; to see it, know it, absorb it. To know that it was
just as real
as the bad things; that the bad did not destroy all good.

And it was hard.

She thought about the undercity, and she walked out of the room, still clinging to Duster's hand, as if afraid that at any moment Duster would change her mind, withdraw, and be gone. But even if she left
now
, she had made a choice that she would never have made before, and that was its own hope, and Jewel lived on hope.

What had she said to Duster? That it was always harder when you had something to lose? Maybe. But was it really easier when you had nothing at all?

She looked at Finch, at Teller, and they met her eyes, searched them, did not, this time, look away. They were afraid for her, afraid of what she might be feeling, and she was their den leader. What she felt now, she felt; what she showed them of that, she
chose
.

And she would have to choose wisely.

She almost bumped into Lander, who was standing there, waiting. He looked at her, but it was a glance, no more; almost all of his attention was on Duster.

Duster started to speak, and then she said, “Let go of my hands.”

Jewel shook her head, and Duster added, “Just for now, then. Let go of them for now.”

And understanding came to Jewel, and she did as Duster had asked. Not commanded, not demanded, but asked. Her hands—both of their hands—were red and wet, but Jewel didn't care. She watched as Duster lifted hers, the evidence of her deed there, darker where the lifeline ran.

Those hands moved slowly, the fingers shaking as she did the small dance in the air with deliberate care.

Lander understood the two words. He closed his eyes.

Duster did not immediately return to Jewel; instead, she stepped forward, and Jewel watched as a girl that demons would foster—in their cruel, terrible fashion—now touched both shoulders of a boy who had been mute for so long. That she left the imprints of blood on either shoulder should have felt accidental, but it wasn't; Jewel could see that Duster now made a deliberate choice.

And Jewel's Oma said,
Words are cheap. They don't say what we mean. The don't mean what we say. Judge, learn to judge, by other means.

Judgment had always been a top priority for her Oma.

Jewel tried not to judge now. Not Duster, who had done, in the end, what Jewel herself was afraid she could
not
have done; not the boy who had waited—she saw this clearly now—for Duster to keep her word. To kill the man who had hurt them both in their captivity.

The blood might never wash out, Jewel thought. But that was fair. The memories wouldn't either; they were just harder to see unless one knew how to read their signs and shadows in the ways the people who held them behaved.

Lander bowed his head, bowed it low enough that it could touch Duster's forehead; they stood this way for a long moment. Long enough, but Duster was not Jewel, and was not Finch; she was justice, judgment, death—but she could offer comfort for only so long before it became just another cage.

And Lander said, “Thank you,” so softly it might have been signed. It was enough. Duster's eyes widened slightly. It was her version of surprise, and even gratitude. But she didn't tell Lander that she hadn't done this for him. She didn't deride him. She had always somehow managed to be, if not gentle, then not cruel, while dealing with Lander.

Because damaged people were the people she best understood, and she wasn't terribly perceptive. It took very little to see Lander's wounds; it took more to see what might exist beneath them, when all the scabs had cleared. Let Duster do the former; let Jewel do the latter. They each had a role to play, and as long as they
could
, they would have a home, and a family. Blood bound them, and if it was not birth blood, it was enough.

“Go out the kitchen doors,” Rath told her. “Left, here. They'll swing in. No one will stop you,” he added, his voice slightly lower. “I have business here to which I must attend, but I will meet you at home before dawn.”

“And if you're not there?” Jewel asked, with just a trace of hesitation. It was not a question she had really dared to ask before. But many things had been torn from her this evening.

“I
will be
there,” he replied.

She could not doubt that tone.

“We'll be waiting,” she told him, and then, in a slightly louder voice, “Kitchen, then; we'll leave that way. Do you remember how you got here?”

Teller said quietly, “I do.”

“Good, because I have
no idea
how to get back.”

His smile was slight, almost shy, but there was a shadow across it that he would never, ever put into words; she saw that clearly as well. “I know.”

She would love him for it for a long, long time, if the gods smiled, and if they were kind.

Rath watched them go. In silence, he watched, stood guard over the dead. The dead that would cause them all so much trouble, if the situation were not handled carefully, correctly. This, Ararath Handernesse, heir to a House among the patriciate that he would never claim, could do.

But there were other things that he could not do. Watching as they walked, this odd group of strange children who now circled and hid both their leader and her adopted killer, he felt a strange sense of something that was almost pride, and a bitter certainty that he had failed them all; that they were strong enough to
bear
his failure because Jewel was strong enough to bear it.

He had opened up his home to Jewel's intrusive presence, and he had lied to himself about his reasons for doing so. Or perhaps not; was ignorance truly lying? He had encouraged her in the end to do what he said he would not accept: invade it, by stealth and by determination, take it over, make it her own.

She had chosen her den, although she would never have called them that at the time; she had chosen as wisely as she could, given her circumstances—and never in ways that he could have conceived.

He had always known that she would be tested. He had intended—from the moment he had agreed to help her—that
this
would be her test. And it had been. And she had not only passed it, but risen above his expectations in ways that were bitter and horrible to him now.

Pride in her, yes, and wonder.

But for himself he felt only loathing, and a blacker loathing than he had ever felt. He had fallen lower than he now stood many times in his life, starting with his abdication of all responsibility in the face of what he had thought of as his sister's betrayal. But
he
had fallen; he had paid the price for the fall, and he had struggled to stand, to walk, and to survive, aware of it.

This time, it was not his price to pay. He had never intended this to happen; he had never intended for things to go so far, so quickly. And he
should have seen it
. He should have known that Duster would fail in her duties. He should have known that somehow—somehow—the demons in the brothel and the Patris AMatie were so intimately tied, that AMatie would be a concern.

He had failed to see. He had failed to plan accordingly. And there she was, in the wake of his failure.

She could walk, surrounded by them. She could smile, or cry, or speak, could ignore it in their presence. But Rath was not Jewel; he did not live on hope. He lived, rather, by bitter experience, and he knew that the scars she bore would never truly fade.

And yet, in the end, she had all but denied what was completely obvious to every single child in the room, because to do less was to damage
them.
He had seen what was on her face; he had seen the dagger in her hand; he had seen the uncertainty, the revulsion, the horror and—yes—the desire for vengeance and death. And she had handed Carver the dagger instead, and by managing to do just that, she had become—did she know it?—the sheath for Duster that she had spoken of so carefully.